I’ve done quite a few Sweet 16 cakes in my day, but until now, I’ve only dreamed of making something for a Quinceañera. I know it’s not your standard fountain and staircases with all the little girl figures holding miniature bouquets, but it’s still just as special, and this one in particular reflects a lot of the personality of the recipient.

When I met the soon to be 15 year old I noticed she was a fashion forward thinker with a simplified and elegant sense of style. Her favorite color is a bright teal blue, like a variant of the turquoise gem stone. As I was working out the design from several pictures her mother provided from Pinterest, I kept in mind silver and white accents, with a tiny flourish of pink.

The flowers are made from gumpaste, and the initials on the cupcakes are made with chocolate. It took a bit of work to get the chocolate and gumpaste to match. The cake is a Fruit and Cream with cream cheese icing. Here’s a closer look when it was back on the decorating table.

The topper was special ordered, and kind of tricky to find. A lot of online cake decorating websites were either pushing a very expensive Swarovski crystal topper costing anywhere form $50 – $130 or that new plastic diamante effect nonsense with the concave “gemstones” that only looks good in blurry photos and/or with photo-shopped bling added to it. I realize some people are on a budget, but I don’t think your cake needs to be the one to let your friends know you’re on a budget. I digress. The point is, I went with the swirly mirror 15 because it was silver, fun, youthful, elegant, and it didn’t cost more than the cake.

The mother picked out the cupcake wrappers from our catalogue. They can actually be colored to match any color of the rainbow, but we decided there was already so much going on with the design that the original sparkly white would be perfect.

There were a lot of components to this order, and it took a lot of work. However, I can’t wait to do another one.